As the value and use of information continues to increase, individuals and businesses seek additional ways to process and store information. One option available to users is information handling systems. An information handling system generally processes, compiles, stores, and/or communicates information or data for business, personal, or other purposes thereby allowing users to take advantage of the value of the information. Because technology and information handling needs and requirements vary between different users or applications, information handling systems may also vary regarding what information is handled, how the information is handled, how much information is processed, stored, or communicated, and how quickly and efficiently the information may be processed, stored, or communicated. The variations in information handling systems allow for information handling systems to be general or configured for a specific user or specific use such as financial transaction processing, airline reservations, enterprise data storage, or global communications. In addition, information handling systems may include a variety of hardware and software components that may be configured to process, store, and communicate information and may include one or more computer systems, data storage systems, and networking systems.
In this regard, RAID, an acronym for Redundant Array of Independent Disks, is a technology that provides increased storage functions and increased reliability through redundancy, and as such may be beneficially employed in information handling systems. Redundancy in a RAID device may be achieved by combining multiple disk drive components, which may include one or more disks of different type, size, or classification, into a logical unit, where data is distributed across the drives in one of several ways called “RAID levels.” The data distribution determines the RAID type, e.g., RAID 0, RAID 5, RAID 10, etc.
RAID includes data storage schemes that can divide and replicate data among multiple physical disk drives. The physical disks are said to be in a RAID array, which is addressed by the operating system as one single disk. Many different schemes or architectures of RAID devices are known to those having ordinary skill in the art. Each different architecture or scheme may provide a different balance among various goals to be achieved in storing data, which include, but are not limited to, increased data reliability and increased input/output (hereinafter “I/O”) performance. Furthermore, RAID devices may be grouped into one or more “tiers,” where data of higher importance (e.g., higher priority data, more-often accessed data, etc.) may be stored in higher performance RAID tiers, and data of lower importance (e.g., lower priority data, least-often accessed data, etc.) may be stored in lower performance RAID tiers.